Release Date: Jul 9, 2013
Genre(s): Pop/Rock, Alternative/Indie Rock, Indie Rock, Indie Electronic, Post-Rock
Record label: Peek-a-Boo
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Texan experimental indie quartet the Octopus Project started in the late '90s as an almost exclusively instrumental act, crafting high-energy party pop heavy on quirky hooks and electronic dabbling. In the time between 2010's Hexadecagon and 2013's monumental Fever Forms, the band stayed incredibly busy with ventures ranging from scoring several films to providing backup for Devo when an ailing Bob Mothersbaugh couldn't make a gig. Over ten years into their craft, they've come a long way from the basement parties and scrappy jams of their early days.
The Octopus Project have been putting out synth-rock that’s weird, fun, catchy, and experimental in equal measure for over a decade now. Their fifth album (or sixth, if you count their full-length collaboration with Black Moth Super Rainbow) Fever Forms is more of the same. But when “experimental” is one of your buzzwords, “more of the same” can encompass an awful lot.
Psych-poppers The Octopus Project went big on their last album (2010’s Hexadecagon), focusing eccentric instrumentation into a masterfully orchestrated suite of rock candy sweetness. The Austin outfit’s new album Fever Forms circles back closer to the record that broke them into major audiences, Hello Avalanche. Tiny bursts of cartoony fun erupt from the disc, theremins, mathy guitars, and squonky synths running through neon fields.
The Octopus Project Fever Forms (Peek-A-Boo Records) Crowned technoids, electro wizards, rock sprockets, etc., the Octopus Project still sounds the way a kaleidoscope looks. For 14 years, the local quartet has trafficked in a wild array of intensely curated and highly energetic sonic and visual explorations, but the longtime Peek-A-Boo players' abilities to transfer that kinetic energy from the stage to the studio remained somewhat unstable. No more.
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